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FORTY YEARS AFTER. 

The Greatness of 
Abraham Lincoln: 

AN ADDRESS 

Delivered at the Lincoln Monument 

On Decoration Day, 

May 30, 1905, 



FREDERICK HOWARD WINES, EE. D. 



SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS: 
1905. 



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lift 

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<&\\t <&veatne*& of Qbvahaxn gixtcoixt. 



There is nothing new to be said about Abraham Lin- 
coln. On this day consecrated to the memory of our 
heroic dead, of whom he is the most illustrious, it is 
nevertheless a sad but pleasant duty to recall him to 
mind and place our humble tribute of grateful appre- 
ciation upon his tomb. Especially is it appropriate 
that this simple ceremonial be not neglected or unworth- 
ily performed in the town where he lived, from which 
he went forth, a knight without fear and without re- 
proach, and to it he returned, crowned with the glory 
of martyrdom. On this spot a nation plunged in grief 
laid his beloved dust to rest in the grave. There are 
those among us who knew him as no others had the 
opportunity to know him. Around the head of every 
departed hero a cloud gathers, large in proportion to 
the height to which he towered above his fellows. It 
takes the shape of a halo, it changes color with the 
lapse of years, as the sky bursts into flame when the 
sun's level rays gild the eastern or western horizon; 
but, as the light of the noonday sun is white, so, in the 
light of historical criticism, that which was mythical 
fades away, and the true image of the man appears. 
The difficult task that I have set myself, on this occa- 
sion, is to draw a truthful portrait of Lincoln, one 
whose verisimilitude will be felt and acknowledged by 
those of his townsmen and contemporaries still living, 
whose mouthpiece for the moment I would fain make 
myself; for my eyes never beheld him except in death. 



Nature made Lincoln great. That his greatness was 
not always recognized by those who saw him in the 
undress which was natural to him, is not surprising. 
A mine does not reveal its hidden treasure until it is 
opened. His ungainly figure was the casket in which 
Nature had deposited a gem of priceless, unsuspected 
value, a new soul, and such a one as his neighbors, his 
country and the world did not dream to exist upon 
earth. 

Because he was not understood, and is not yet under- 
stood, the imagination clothes with him mystery and 
is prone to regard his career as a miracle. An appre- 
ciative, sympathetic biographer has even said of him 
that "he was an enigma to all men." From this 
view I venture to dissent. There is indeed a sense in 
which every man is an enigma to every other. No 
man can or will unveil himself to any other, except 
in part. No two men touch at all points, therefore no 
two can comprehend each other, except in part. We 
are all many-sided; Lincoln was so to a degree far 
beyond most men. He was reticent by nature, did his 
own thinking, acted upon his own judgment, gave his 
entire confidence to no one, rarely sought advice, and 
said no more upon any occasion than he chose to say. 
Genius is always inexplicable. 

It has been truly said that "to understand a thing 
is to perceive its relations." To understand Lincoln, we 
must comprehend his relations. He was of pioneer 
stock, and his early life was that of a pioneer. How 
inadequate, if not how false, is the conception formed 
of pioneer life by one who has not himself shared it, 
who knows the backwoods and the frontier only by 
hearsay and report, who has never stood where he 
could see the tide of emigration flow past him over the 
prairies and plains of the great west ! A portrait must 



have a background. Is it reasonable to suppose that 
any but a frontiersman can so paint the reflected lights 
and shadows as to bring into strong relief that gigantic 
figure? As well might we expect a foreigner, with 
European traditions and prejudices, who has never 
crossed the Atlantic ocean, to picture to himself the 
new world as it really is. A gulf as wide, as deep as 
that ocean separates, too, the mere litterateur and 
scholar from the able and successful man who has not 
enjoyed the same advantages of a literary training. 
Everything that books contain must have been known 
by somebody, before a book about it could be written. 
Book learning is knowledge at second hand on testi- 
mony, to be received by faith. Lincoln, like all great 
men who are self-made, looked man and nature directly 
in the face. 

It was probably well for him, and for us, that he 
did not receive an academic education. The men of 
whom this can be said are not many, but he must be 
numbered among them. The knowledge of books is 
not the knowledge of men, and for one in public life 
the knowledge of men is of greater consequence than 
that of books. The farm, the fiatboat, the country 
store, the judicial circuit, brought him into touch with 
the people as the university never could have done. 
The university would have removed him to too great a 
distance from them. The effort involved in acquiring 
knowledge by his unaided exertions imparted additional 
vigor to his mind. The sense of his ignorance of many 
things taught within college walls developed within 
him the grace of intellectual humility, that prime con- 
dition of intellectual greatness. And his powers were 
not dissipated by diversion from the main subject upon 
which his attention was concentrated — law and politics, 
or the science and art of government. So far from be- 



ing illiterate, however, he was an indefatigable student, 
in his early youth, and later in life, for instance, at 
Vandalia, where, it is said, while in the legislature, he 
read everything in the state library bearing upon the 
special theme which he sought to master. He took 
nothing into his mind that he did not assimilate, he 
had a retentive memory, all that he acquired was a per- 
manent possession, which became a part, so to speak, of 
himself. 

He was self-educated, but the remains of his personal 
library attest the fact that, when he was a law student 
in the office of John T. Stuart, he had studied with care 
all the text-books on mathematics, physics and belles 
lettres which were at that time included in the curri- 
culum of Yale College. He probably knew them better 
than most Yale graduates. He never acquired a knowl- 
edge of any language but his mother-tongue; but his 
mastery of English style, as shown in the Gettysburg 
address and in his second inaugural, both of which are 
numbered among the masterpieces of literature, was 
due to his remarkable familiarity with Shakespeare and 
the Bible. 

It was only by slow degrees that his ability and at- 
tainments became apparent to the world. There is 
still, perhaps, in certain circles, too strong a disposition 
to measure him by inapplicable and artificial standards. 

The greatness of a man consists not in what he does, 
but in what he is. What he does proves what he is. 
He grows by doing, of course. He may be great, but 
never have an opportunity to show to the world to his 
real capacity. Nature has always in reserve an unlim- 
ited supply of great men, for whose services she has 
no actual need. For the want of scope and exercise for 
his talents a man essentially great may never bring his 
powers to the point of full fruitage. Men are like 



trees. To produce a sequoia, such as we see in the val- 
ley of the Yosemite, there is needed first the seed of a 
sequoia, and after that the conditions of soil and cli- 
mate favorable to its growth. That which was in the 
seed comes out of it ; had it not been there, it would not 
have come out. Apply this to Abraham Lincoln. Con- 
trast him with the men who had opportunities but little 
inferior to his own, but who failed to profit by them, 
because they were of inferior calibre. He did the great 
things he did, because he was great. He would have 
been great, had he never done them, being what God 
made him, though we might never have found it out. 
That is the central truth on which I beg you to fix 
your attention, for all that I may say will be by way 
of illustrating it and pressing it home. 

Of his physique I shall say little. His size and his 
strength are proverbial. As to his health, I observe that 
none of his biographers refer to any serious illness 
from which he ever suffered. He was subject to fits 
of terrible nervous depression, especially in early man- 
hood, but they seem to have been temperamental, and 
not the result of physical exhaustion. He is commonly 
said to have been of homely features ; but I have heard 
an artist, a sculptor, contend that this is a matter of 
opinion. Beauty is not an objective fact, but a subjec- 
tive impression; and for his part, he saw in him the 
beauty of rugged strength, of honesty and kindness, 
and he declared his face to be a rare and perfect speci- 
men of the highest type of manly beauty, such as that 
of Julius Caesar. 

When we consider his intellectual qualities, there can 
be no question that love of the truth was the master 
passion of his soul. Had he lived in the days of coat 
armor, the legend upon his shield might well have been 
the saying of Solomon, or of some one as wise as Solo- 



inon, "Buy the truth and sell it not." He sought for 
wisdom as for hid treasure. How he toiled, alone, 
without a teacher, and in the face of difficulties which 
in the case of most boys would have proved insurmount- 
able, to acquire the rudiments of knowledge ! Truth 
had such an affinity for his mind that he may almost 
be said to have divined it by intuition. This love of 
truth was like an inward light. It enabled him to see 
all things in perspective. His mind was like a camera. 
He believed in the truth. He identified his fortunes 
with it, casting himself upon its bosom as he launched 
his flatboat upon the current of the Mississippi, with 
full assurance that its majestic flow would bear him to 
his desired and destined haven. The larger the truth, 
the greater his confidence in it. Without technical 
scientific training, he grasped the basic conception of 
science, that of the sequence of cause and effect in an 
unbroken series, the uniformity, universality, and im- 
mutability of natural law. Unread in metaphysics, he 
was a student of history, and felt that he and all men 
and all events are controlled by that mysterious power 
which the ignorant call fate, the wise law, and the re- 
ligious providence. A year before his death he wrote 
to a friend, "I claim not to have controlled events but 
confess plainly that events have controlled me." This 
simple faith was the secret of his patient optimism, 
his unsurpassed courage, his fidelity to every trust. 

Closely allied to this supreme love of truth was his 
exquisite sense of right. Eight is truth in action. 
Truth and righteousness were the two poles of the axis 
around which his entire being revolved with an un- 
varying steadiness resembling the regularity of the di- 
uranl motion of the globe. 

From a very early age he was dimly conscious of his 
budding powers, and restlessly sought a vent for their 



exercise and display. Ambition is innate in every su- 
perior mind. His ambition was inseparably united to 
the burning wish to be of service to mankind. In his 
first address to his constituents he said, "I have no 
other [ambition] so great as that of being truly es- 
teemed by my fellow-men, by rendering myself worthy 
of their esteem." At the moment of the most profound 
gloom into which he ever fell, he said, "I have an 
irrepressible desire to live till I can be assured that the 
world is a little better for my having lived in it." In 
his address before the Springfield Lyceum he declared 
that the ambition of many men aspires to nothing 
higher than the holding of public office— a seat in Con- 
gress, a gubernatorial or presidential chair, "but such 
belong not to the family of the lion or the tribe of the 
eagle." "Towering genius," he continued, "thirsts and 
burns for distinction; and if possible it will have it, 
whether at the expense of emancipating slaves or en- 
slaving freemen." The nature of the distinction which 
he coveted, and which he ultimately achieved, is fore- 
shadowed in this youthful production. He obeyed the 
injunction of Emerson, he "hitched his wagon to a 
star." 

He was but twenty-three years of age when, untried 
and unknown, without backing of any description, he 
announced himself as a candidate for the legislature, 
quaintly remarking: "If elected, I shall be thankful; 
if not, it will be all the same." He was but two years 
older when his ambition was gratified. For four suc- 
cessive terms, covering a period of eight years, his con- 
stituents returned him to the lower house. Twice in 
succession he was selected by his Whig colleagues as 
their candidate for the speakership, and they went down 
to defeat bearing a banner inscribed with his name. 
Both in 1840 and in 1844 his name was on their elec- 



toral ticket. At the age of thirty-seven he was sent to 
Washington as Congressman, the only Whig Congress- 
man from his state. From that time forward, he was 
admittedly the foremost man of his party in Illinois; 
three times its candidate for a seat in the United 
States Senate — in 1849, when he was defeated by 
Shields, in 1855, when, in order to defeat Matteson, he 
withdrew in favor of Trumbull, and in 1859, when he 
was beaten by Douglas. 

Such honors do not come by accident, nor to men un- 
worthy of them. His social qualities, his kindness of 
heart, his affability, his sense of humor and skill as a 
raconteur, all contributed to render him popular. He 
had the tender sympathy for men, and even for ani- 
mals, which caused him to spend an hour in replacing 
in their nest two half-fledged birds, and then apologize 
for it in the words, "I could not have slept well to-night, 
if I had not saved those birds; their cries would have 
rung in my ears." It afterward impelled him to par- 
don deserters, and to say, when urged to retaliate the 
cruelty of Andersonville in kind, "I never can; I can 
never starve men like that." He expressed the core of 
his great heart, when he remarked of himself, "Die 
when I may, I want it said of me by those who knew 
me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a 
flower when I thought a flower would grow." But pop- 
ularity does not insure permanent precedence; it is as 
ephemeral as the ever veering wind. Leadership de- 
pends on the enduring qualities of head and heart of 
him who retains through life his ascendancy over men. 

Neither can we account for such continued ascendancy 
by attributing it to skill in the arts of the political 
manipulator. He knew those arts. Within the limits 
of integrity and honor, he may be said to have prac- 
tised them. He was a politician. No man not a poli- 

10 



-*.' 



tician is qualified to be governor of a state or president 
of the republic. A more astute politician this country 
has perhaps never known. Among his friends were 
many politicians less scrupulous than himself, for 
whose actions he cannot be held personally responsible. 
But what is a politician? What is the distinction be- 
tween a politician and a statesman? 

It is the difference between an end and the means to 
that end. A statesman is one who has clearly in mind 
some patriotic purpose ; a politician is one who perceives 
the processes by which alone that purpose can be accom- 
plished. Political ends must be reached, and are ar- 
rived at, by political processes; they can be attained in 
no other way. This Mr. Lincoln well knew, and his 
conduct proves it. The difference between a statesman 
and a politician may be illustrated by comparing the 
former to the engineer who constructs a railway, but 
the latter to the engineer who sits in the cab of the lo- 
comotive which he drives over the rails after they have 
been laid. A road must run somewhere. The politi- 
cian who has no goal in sight other than an office for 
himself will be apt to drive the car of state into the 
ditch or into the river. The self-seeking political 
schemer and wireworker is never a patriot, never a 
statesman. This was not the type of man God gave to 
this nation in the person of Abraham Lincoln. He 
could say of himself in all candor and in truth, "I have 
never done an official act with a view to promote my 
personal aggrandizement." He subordinated his per- 
sonal ambitions to the public good. HM most intimate 
friend says of him, "He never believed in political 
combinations ," and again, "He was much more eager for 
the second nomination than for the first, yet from the 
beginning he discouraged all efforts on the part of his 
friends to obtain it." To one of his appointees, speak- 

11 



ing of his possible use of his position to influence the re- 
sult of a pending election, he wrote these memorable 
words : "My wish is that you will do just as you think 
fit with your own suffrage in the case, and not constrain 
any of your subordinates to do other than he thinks fit 
with his/' No more need be said, in order to differen- 
tiate him from politicians of the baser sort, who seek 
to shield themselves from condemnation by pleading his 
example in justification of their course. 

No, Lincoln had one great end in view throughout 
his life, from its beginning to its close. It was the ex- 
tinction of slavery. Its gradual extinction, mark you, 
not its sudden and violent abolition. He hated slavery 
as intensely as did Lovejoy or Sumner or Seward or 
Chase or Giddings. But he was like Henry Clay, a 
gradual emancipationist, a colonizationist. He advoca- 
ted compensation to the slave-holder. This is one rea- 
son why he was misunderstood. Of the institution as 
an institution, he said : "If slavery is not wrong, noth- 
ing is wrong." He quoted, as expressing his own 
sentiment, the words of Jefferson, himself a slave-hold- 
er: "This momentous question, like a fire-bell in 
the night, awakened and filled me with terror." Who 
does not recall the language of his second inaugural 
with reference to it? "Fondly do we hope, fervently 
do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speed- 
ily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until 
all the wealth piled by the bondman's two hundred 
and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until 
every drop of blood drawn by the lash shall be paid by 
another drawn by the sword, as was said three thousand 
years ago, so still it must be said, 'The judgments of the 
Lord are true and righteous altogether.' " 

Never for one moment did he doubt that freedom 
would in the end triumph over slavery, because he had 

12 



implicit faith in the ultimate victory of truth over error, 
the ultimate triumph of right over wrong. It was his 
fortune to live at an epoch when this was the precise 
issue which absorbed the attention of the American peo- 
ple, to the exclusion of all minor issues which had pre- 
viously divided them. Behold the hour and the man! 

From the day when his only term in Congress came 
to an end in 1849, he was, as has already been said, the 
recognized leader of his party in Illinois. His elevation 
to ,the presidency was no sudden, miraculous event. The 
steps that led to this happy consummation are easily 
traced in history. They were simple, natural, and in a 
sense inevitable. 

In Congress, while he had voted the supplies needed 
with which to carry on the Mexican war, he had openly 
shown his dislike for it and disapproval of President 
Polk's method of beginning it. He had voted for the 
Wilmot proviso, forbidding the establishment of slavery 
in any territory acquired from Mexico, which was agreed 
to by the House, but rejected by the Senate. In the 
Compromise of 1850, shaped by Henry Clay, (who in 
his old age had been recalled from retirement for that 
purpose), California was admitted as a free state, but 
from the newly organized territories of Utah and New 
Mexico slavery was not excluded. Lincoln would have 
preferred to have had it otherwise, but he bowed to the 
law and to the judgment of others, his political friends, 
and accepted the situation. The next five years of his 
life were for him years of comparative political quiesc- 
ence. The Compromise of 1850 had been endorsed in 
the political platforms of both parties. The Whig 
party was in a semi-moribund state. And the question 
of the extension of slavery was generally held and be- 
lieved to have been adjusted for all time by the Missouri 
Compromise of 1820, establishing the line of 36° 30', 

13 



known as Mason and Dixon's line, north of which 
slavery was never to be allowed. It was then that 
Douglas struck a ponderous blow upon the fire-bell of 
Jefferson, whose clangor resounded through the land, 
arousing everybody, north and south alike. Douglas, 
as chairman of the Senate committee on territories, re- 
ported with favorable recommendation the famous Kan- 
sas-Nebraska bill, annulling the Missouri Compromise, 
which was declared to be inoperative and void. This was 
in January, 1854. 

Lincoln at once sprang into the ring as champion of 
the opposition to this revolutionary measure. 

No Illinoisan would detract in the smallest degree 
from the well-earned, well-merited fame of Senator 
Douglas. In this state at least, the names of Lincoln 
and Douglas lead all the rest. These two were rivals at 
all points. Their respective careers abound in parallels 
and in contrasts, of which it is hard to say which were 
the most wonderful. Douglas, like Lincoln, was both a 
politician and a statesman ; but in Lincoln the politician 
was subordinated to the statesman. This cannot be said 
of Douglas with equal assurance. It would, however, 
be unfair to him to question the sincerity of his con- 
victions or to insinuate that his motives, though they 
may have been mixed, were not consistent with genuine 
love of country. He made a mistake, a fatal mistake. 
His ability no one denies. His soubriquet was "The 
Little Giant." The Whigs were afraid of him. Make 
him out to be never so great, the fact remains that Lin- 
coln was greater. No man but Lincoln was ever put 
up to meet him in debate. Lincoln never feared to 
measure swords with him, anywhere or at any time. 
At the State Fair, which was held in Springfield in Oc- 
tober, 1854, Douglas defended his position and his con- 



14 



duct as a senator from the free state of Illinois. The 
clarion voice of Lincoln rang out in reply, with such 
effect that his political friends requested him in writing 
to follow Douglas up until the election: They clashed 
again at Peoria, when Douglas asked him to desist, and 
accordingly it was agreed that there should be no more 
joint discussion between them during that campaign. 

The Republican party was organized in 1856 — in this 
state at Bloomington, in the nation at Philadelphia, 
where 110 votes (a little less than one-third) were reg- 
istered as in favor of Lincoln for vice-president on the 
ticket with Fremont. His name was placed by the Re- 
publicans of Illinois that year on their electoral ticket. 
He would have been the candidate of the party for gov- 
ernor, had he not declined the honor in advance. He 
threw himself with ardor into the campaign as a private 
serving in the ranks. None the less on that account 
was he the real leader in the fray. 

Those were the days of "bleeding Kansas" and of the 
DTed Scott decision. The Nebraska Bill contained what 
Benton characterized as "a stump speech within its 
belly," declaring it to be "the true meaning and intent 
of this act not to legislate slavery into any territoty or 
state, nor to exclude it therefrom, but to leave the people 
thereof perfectly free to form and regulate their do- 
mestic institutions in their own way, subject only to the 
Constitution." This was called popular sovereignty. 
The Dred Scott decision went farther. The opinion, 
in the nature of an obiter dictum, was expressed, that 
Congress had no power to exclude slavery from the ter- 
ritories. This was a set-back to popular sovereignty, 
from an unexpected source. Douglas cheerfully brushed 
it to one side with the remark that without friendly leg- 
islation to protect the property in man, slavery might, 



15 



under that decision, be lawful in a territory, but it 
would be impossible. His unfortunate dilemma was 
tliat, to become president, he had to persuade the south 
that his political convictions were favorable to the exten- 
sion of slavery into the territories, and at the same time 
to satisfy the north that they were not such as to result 
in its extension. It was upon the horns of this dilemma 
that Lincoln finally succeeded in impaling him. Twice 
in succession the Democratic party had refused to name 
Douglas as its candidate for the presidency. The Ne- 
braska Bill had availed him nought. He then turned 
back from the south to the north, and when Kansas 
knocked for admission to the Union with the Lecompton 
Constitution in her hand, he broke with James Bu- 
chanan, and voted against it. He did right, and his 
conduct in that regard needs no apology, no defense. 
. So great were his powers of persuasion, that he almost 
succeeded in inducing the Republican party to adopt him 
as its favorite son, deposing Lincoln from the place he 
held in its councils and in its esteem, in order that his 
lifelong rival — a man who "cared not whether slavery 
be voted down or voted up" — might become the benefi- 
ciary of the change of leadership which even Horace 
Greeley approved and advocated. Stephen A. Douglas 
was indeed a wonderful man. 

But in 1858 he was the candidate of the Democratic 
party in Illinois for the senatorship, to succeed himself. 
The Eepublican state convention, at Springfield, re- 
solved: "That Abraham Lincoln is our first and only 
choice for United States Senator to fill the vacancy about 
to be created by the expiration of Mr. Douglas' term of 
office." The issue thus joined was personal, but it was 
more than that : it was an issue of principle. From the 
foundation of the Republic two opposite beliefs had 

16 



been contending for political mastery. The destiny of 
the nation was involved in the choice to be made between 
them. Lincoln knew it. He was no time-server, no 
coward. A braver man never lived. He had faith in 
himself, but he had still greater faith in the 
rock of truth on which his feet were planted. His 
moral judgments were his own. On an ethical question 
he was never known to ask or accept advice. This was 
an ethical question. Accordingly, in his speech of ac- 
ceptance, he made the bold assertion : " 'A house divided 
against itself cannot stand.' I believe this government 
cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. I 
do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not ex- 
pect the house to fall — but I do expect it will cease to 
be divided. It will become all one thing or all the 
other. Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the 
further spread of it, and place it where the public mind 
shall rest in the belief that it is in the course of ultimate 
extinction; or its advocates will push it forward, till it 
becomes alike lawful in all the states — old as well as 
new, north as well as south." 

Then the storm broke. Few were the friends who 
dared to say that he was right. The great majority 
condemned this utterance. Your politician is a timor- 
ous creature, short-sighted, with eyes upon the ground, 
not looking upward to the sky, who sees in his own 
shadow a ghost with gory locks, but the sun that casts 
that shadow is for him as if it were not. It was in- 
stinctively felt by every Eepublican that the senatorship 
was lost, as indeed it proved to be. The vision of a 
larger but delayed triumph was obscured by the appre- 
hension of present defeat. But Lincoln knew. He had 
made his point. As a politician, to take no higher view 
of the situation, he was greater than them all, greater 

17 



than any man in these United States. Politics is a 
game. It may be likened to a game of chess. A first- 
rate player says to his opponent, "That move will beat 
you." It only remains to play the game out. At the 
right moment he places a piece where, at the crisis of 
the game, it will block any combination his adversary 
may then be able to make. Lincoln knew as well, when 
he delivered that memorable speech, that on the main 
issue, of which he never lost sight, Douglas and his 
party were hopelessly beaten, as when, in the joint de- 
bate between them, he put the unanswerable interroga- 
tory, unanswerable by a northern candidate for the pres- 
idency, I mean: "Can the people of a territory, in any 
lawful way, against the wish of any citizen of the United 
States, exclude slavery from its limits prior to the forma- 
tion of a state constitution?" Exception was taken to 
that question also by his timid supporters. But what 
could Douglas reply? If yes, he broke with the south; 
if no, he cut loose from the north. His hand was 
forced. If he should be elected to a seat in the senate, 
he could never be president ; if he wanted the presidency, 
he must relinquish the senatorship. He was bound to 
lose, and Lincoln was sure of winning, one or the other, 
while it was within the limits of possibility that Lincoln 
might win both. But that was a small matter, even in 
Lincoln's estimation, in comparison with the fact that 
his election to either position signified the victory of 
the principles for which he stood, the triumph of truth 
and right, and the salvation of the country. 

The hour is passing. I think I need say no more 
about that debate, the greatest political debate in the 
history of any nation, whose event was to decide the 
destiny not only of this nation, but in time to come that 
of the world, the fate of modern civilization. Let us 



18 



hasten on to the meeting of the Chicago Convention. 
Lincoln had disposed of Douglas, who was nominated 
by a minority of his party, after a bolt, and received the 
electoral vote of a single state, that of Missouri. There 
remained between Lincoln and the goal of his ambition 
but one man, William H. Seward of New York. Why 
was Lincoln preferred to Seward as the standard-bearer 
of his party, the commander-in-chief of the army and 
navy in the coming conflict? It has been alleged that 
a combination was effected between the friends of Lin- 
coln and those of Simon Cameron, by which the vote of 
Pennsylvania was cast for Lincoln in the convention, in 
return for a pledge that Cameron should be given a seat 
in the cabinet. In what purports to be a memorandum 
of this agreement, in four articles, the second reads, 
"Lincoln's friends have no actual authority — none but a 
moral right." Lincoln had written to David Davis, 
"Make no contracts that will bind me." He gave Cam- 
eron the war portfolio because he believed it wise so to 
do, not because he admitted the binding obligation of 
that pledge. It might be said that Seward put himself 
out of the running, when he enunciated his belief in the 
doctrine of the higher law, because, whatever truth there 
may be in that dogma, in its application to individual 
conduct, it is inapplicable in politics, for the reason that 
no executive officer of the government may, consistently 
with his oath of office, set himself and his conscience 
above the constitution and the law of the land. Lincoln 
did not make that mistake. In his letter to Davis he 
said: "Lincoln agrees with Seward in the irrepressible 
conflict idea, and in negro equality, but he is opposed 
to Seward's higher law." The truth is that Lincoln 
was preferred to Seward because he was the greater man 
of the two, as he showed himself to be within thirty days 
after his inauguration. 

19 



The theme of Lincoln's greatness is inexhaustible. 
This address is not a biographical sketch, still less does 
it purport to be a history of his times. It would never- 
theless be incomplete, even as an estimate of the man in 
his relation to the past and to the future, if no reference 
were made in it to the conduct of the Civil War, and to 
the act on which his fame principally rests, as the 
Great Emancipator. It is the law of finite existence 
that every man, however great, has his limitations. Lin- 
coln was not exempt from the operation of this law. 
He could not sing; he failed to appreciate the beauty 
of nature; he had no love for flowers; he never read a 
novel through, his whole life long. Among the things he 
did not claim to know was the art of war. He hated 
war. He made mistakes, especially during the first two 
years of the war, in the selection of generals. Some of 
them were sad failures, and he bore with them, perhaps, 
longer than he should have done. But it is a note- 
worthy fact, as the record shows, that there was scarcely 
a serious military blunder committed by any of them 
against which he did not protest in advance. He fol- 
lowed every move upon the field of battle, with minute 
attention to every detail. Often discouraged, he never 
despaired. His patience, his endurance, his courage, 
his sagacity, his devotion, were sublime. 

Never before, in the history of mankind, had any man 
such a burden to carry, such a task to perform. The 
plurality — not the majority — of voters to whom he owed 
his election included the most incongruous and discord- 
ant elements, Whigs and Democrats, slaveholders and 
abolitionists, held together in face of an impending 
crisis by the shibboleth of anti-Nebraska. They had to 
be fused into something like a homogeneous mass. There 
were the jealous friends of rival candidates for the nomi- 

20 



nation to be placated. To nine-tenths of the people he 
was a stranger. Many believed him to be an accident, 
many thought him incompetent, and some made faces 
at him and cried at the top of their voices that he was 
an ignoramus, a buffoon, an ape, a baboon. Scarcely 
had he bidden farewell to his neighbors and asked their 
prayers for himself and their country, than he was 
forced to address himself to the thankless task of ex- 
plaining himself, making himself known to the public. 
He was threatened even then with assassination. When 
he took the oath of office, in a city so hostile to him, al- 
though the capital of the nation, that every military pre- 
caution had been taken in advance for his personal 
safety, six states had already seceded, his arsenals had 
been plundered, his troops scattered, many of his forts 
seized or dismantled. Advisers buzzed in his ears, 
thicker than the flies in Egypt ; and office-seekers dogged 
his steps, more hungry than the devouring locusts, whom 
he could not, like Moses, drive into the Eed Sea. In 
less than six weeks from his inauguration civil war had 
broken out. He had to create an army, to equip it, to 
organize it, to drill it and make it ready to take the field. 
Without a navy, he had to establish a blockade, from 
Norfolk to Galveston. . The Confederate army advanced 
to within ten miles of Washington. Then arose the 
senseless cry, "On to Kichmond !" followed by the dis- 
aster of Bull Eun, and the interminable, fruitless cam- 
paign in the Peninsula, unrelieved by a single victory of 
any moment. Neither McClellan in the east nor Fre- 
mont in the west met his expectations. Political gen- 
erals were the plague of his life ; they told him what his 
civil duties were, and usurped his powers, issuing eman- 
cipation proclamations on their own responsibility, 
which he had to modify or disavow. No foreign power 

21 



was his friend, unless we except Russia. England was 
his secret foe. From her ports Confederate cruisers 
went forth to harry American commerce, and her bank- 
ers loaned money to the insurgent government. To pay 
his soldiers and sailors he had to improvise a paper cur- 
rency, which he knew, in case of failure, might never be 
redeemed. We won battles, and we lost them. We ad- 
vanced and we retreated. His patriotic soul was torn 
with anxiety as to the outcome. And there were foes 
in his rear, as well as in front of him — detractors, proph- 
ets of evil, men openly or secretly disloyal, speculators in 
calamity, vampires who gorged themselves to repletion 
on human blood. Speaking to you, comrades, I, a sol- 
dier, thank God that through good report and through 
evil report none of us ever faltered or flinched, but we 
stood to our guns to the last. 

We thank God, too, for Grant, who fought the battle 
of Belmont, captured Forts Henry and Donelson, invest- 
ed and took Vicksburg, was in command at Chatta- 
nooga, accomplished in Virginia what no general before 
him could do, and at last received the sword of Lee at 
Appomattox and sent home our brave but misguided 
brothers, our opponents on many a hard fought field, 
with their horses, their side-arms and his blessing. 
Others there were, whom it grieves me not to name, but 
the time is too short, and Grant was the noblest Roman 
of them all. Let him stand as a symbol of all the rest. 

Some psychologist has said that will-power is the 
power of resistance. Since it is «asy to follow the sug- 
gestion of impulse and inclination, it requires no extra- 
ordinary exercise of volition to do that ; but inhibition 
is quite another matter. Lincoln revealed his strength 
in what he did not do, quite as much as in what he did. 
We have noted his intense feeling on the question of 

22 



slavery; we have seen that his cardinal aim in life was 
to confine it to its actual area, with a view to its ultimate 
extinction. But the moment that he became responsible 
to the nation for his official acts, he declared that it was 
not his intention to interfere with it, where it was al- 
ready recognized and protected by law. With that ac- 
curate sense of proportion by which he was distin- 
guished, he proclaimed the primary purpose of the war 
to be, not the destruction of slavery, but the preservation 
of the Union. With or without slavery, he would save 
the Union; without it if he could, with it if he must. 
This simple but obvious analysis of the complex problem 
before him, this insistence upon dealing first with the 
most salient element in it, leaving the deeper question 
for subsequent solution, though it was offensive to many 
radical anti-slavery men, was wise and politic. By in- 
sisting upon it, he prevented the secession of Maryland, 
Kentucky and Missouri. When the hour arrived at 
which emancipation seemed to be indicated as a prudent 
war measure, calculated to hasten the collapse of the 
Confederacy, he issued it of his own motion, in his own 
words, and at his own selected time; dividing it into 
two movements, so to speak, two manifestos, the first 
announcing his purpose of manumission, the second 
carrying it out. It applied only to those portions of 
the country in actual rebellion on the first day of Janu- 
ary, 1863. One year later, the thirteenth constitu- 
tional amendment was introduced in Congress, annihil- 
ating slavery and involuntary servitude, except as a 
punishment for crime, wherever the jurisdiction of the 
United States extends. Two years later, it was adopted. 
Illinois was first of all the states to ratify it, greatly to 
the President's joy. 

Without detracting from the lustre attaching to the 

23 



achievements of any man or of any state, Illinois can 
point to her war record with peculiar pride. She gave to 
the country Lincoln, Grant and Logan. It was a senator 
from Illinois, Lyman Trumbull, who, as chairman of 
the committee on judiciary, framed and reported the 
thirteenth amendment, by which the bolt forged by 
Lincoln in the emancipation proclamation was riveted 
on the other side. Nor can it ever be forgotten, that 
Douglas himself, when he beheld the conflagration which 
his indiscretion had kindled, severed every tie that bound 
him to the past and declared that, with an army march- 
ing upon the capital, there remained but one thing to do ; 
the most direct road to peace was the most stupendous 
preparation for war, there could be no neutrals in such 
a struggle, and it was the duty of every lover of the 
flag to rally to its support. 

But what are leaders, without followers? What are 
generals, without the rank and file? As the power 
generated by a dynamo is discharged through a single 
point, so a leader is impotent, unless the people are be- 
hind him and with him. The power itself is from God ; 
it is drawn from the everlasting, inexhaustible reservoir 
of nature. As sons of Illinois, by birth or by adoption, 
we hold in eternal honor the memories of the men, 
officers and privates alike, who with Grant ascended the 
Tennessee, sailed or marched down the Mississippi, and 
shared with him the glories of Vicksburg, Chattanooga, 
the Wilderness, and Spottsylvania ; who with Sherman 
were at Atlanta, and made with him that daring march 
to the sea; who with Meade saw the crest of the rising 
tide of rebellion break against the stone wall by the or- 
chard and the cemetery at Gettysburg; who with Sher- 
idan cleared the valley of the Shenandoah and fought 
the battle of Five Forks. Wherever they were, there 

24 



or elsewhere, on the land or on the sea, of the great 
majority it can now he said, "Their swords are rust, 
their bones are dust, their souls are with the saints, we 
trust." A few of us still survive, to plant flowers upon 
their graves and water them with our tears. 

The story of the surrender and of the assassination, 
both occurring within the space of one short week, is 
too fresh in your minds to demand retelling. That of 
Lincoln's death is too sad. It would cause you, even 
now, forty years afterward, too much pain. He was the 
man in the parable, whose ten talents had gained ten 
other talents beside them, to whom the Master could 
say, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant." He 
gave the crowning proof of love; he laid down hi6 life 
for his friends. He was the enemy of no man. Of 
those in arms against the government and of their sym- 
pathizers at the north he said, on the day of the sur- 
render: "Enemies! We must never speak of that! 
The south felt — Grant has said it, and we believe it — that 
in his death the south lost its best and truest friend. 
He was the friend of every man. Had he lived, what 
would have been the history of reconstruction? We 
can only speculate; we can not tell. This at least we 
know : that there was in his heart no bitterness, no mal- 
ice, no hatred, no revenge. No man living would have 
so rejoiced at the sight which it is our privilege to be- 
hold, of a country reunited in fact as well as in name, 
with the blue and the gray drinking out of the same 
canteen. Having obtained a good report through faith, 
he received not the promise ; but like Moses, he saw the 
promised land from the top of the mountains of Nebo. 
And he was not, for God took him. 



25 






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